Note: to allow us to share the latest in commercial deployment of ontology-based technology, this invited talk will be featured under a special waiver to Siri on the Ontolog IPR Policy.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(1D)

Siri is a Virtual Personal Assistant ... more specifically, an intelligent software one would download into his mobile device (like an iPhone or a Nexus One phone) and have it start "doing" things for you like an assistant.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(1E7)

Siri was born out of SRI's CALO Project (which Adam presented here before), the largest Artificial Intelligence project in U.S. history. (CALO stands for Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes). Made possible by a $150 million DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) investment, the CALO Project included 25 research organizations and institutions and spanned 5 years.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(1E8)

Among other accolades, Siri has been recognized by the MIT Technology Review as one of their "TR 10" in 2009 - the magazine's annual recognition of the list of top 10 emerging technologies that can change the way we live.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(1E9)

Started in 2007 in a stealth mode, Siri has finally released their product earlier this month. We are glad Adam and Tom (who co-founded Siri, along with Dag Kittlaus) can come and give us a talk and a demo on this brainchild of theirs and their team.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(1E10)

Adam Cheyer is a co-founder and Siri's VP of Engineering. He joined the company from SRI, where he was the Program Director in SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center and Chief Architect of the CALO/PAL project. A pioneer in the areas of distributed computing, intelligent agents, and advanced user interfaces, Adam is the author of more than fifty peer-reviewed publications and nine patents. He was previously the VP of Engineering at Dejima and the VP of Engineering at Verticalnet. Adam is also a founding member of Change.org and Genetic Finance, LLC.
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Tom Gruber is a co-founder and Siri's Chief Technology Officer. He, of course, is best known to this community as the Stanford scientist who, back in 1992, defined the term "ontology" in the sense we apply to its use in computer science, artificial intelligence and the semantic web these days. Tom is a researcher and entrepreneur with a focus on systems for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and collective intelligence. He did foundational work in ontology engineering with approaches and technologies that are precursors to the infrastructure for today's Semantic Web.
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(when everyone is muted) If you want to speak or have questions or remarks to make, please "raise your hand (virtually)" by click on the "hand button" (lower right) on the chat session page. You may speak when acknowledged by the speaker or the session moderator (again, press "*3" on your phone to unmute). Test your voice and introduce yourself first before proceeding with your remarks, please. (Please remember to click on the "hand button" again (to lower your hand) and press "*2" on your phone to mute yourself after you are done speaking.) &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(1G5F4)

thanks to the soaphub.org folks, one can now use a jabber/xmpp client (e.g. gtalk) to join this chatroom. Just add the room as a buddy - (in our case here) ontolog_20100225@soaphub.org ... Handy for mobile devices!
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